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Friday, July 26, 2013

Article by HariSrinivasan

Enterprise Manager 12c Release 3 includes improvements and enhancements
across every area of the product. This blog provides an overview of the new and
enhanced features in the Database Lifecycle Management area. I will deep dive
into specific features more in depth in subsequent posts.

"What's New?" In this release, we focused on four things:

1. Lifecycle Management Support for new Database12c, especially around the pluggable databases (aka multitenant option)

2. Management of long running processes, such as a security patch cycle
(Change Activity Planner)

3. Management of large number of systems by

· Leveraging new
framework capabilities for lifecycle operations, such as the new advanced ‘emcli’ script option

· Refining features
such as configuration search and compliance

4. Minor improvements and quality fixes to existing features

· Rollback support
for Single instance databases

· Improved "OFFLINE" Patching
experience

· Faster collection
of ORACLE_HOME configurations

Lifecycle Management Support for new Database 12c - Pluggable
Databases

Enterprise Manager can supplement the capabilities of pluggable
databases by offering workflows for migrating, provisioning and cloning them
using the software library and the deployment procedures. For example,
Enterprise Manager can migrate an existing database to a PDB or clone a PDB by
storing a versioned copy in the software library. One can also manage the planned
downtime related to patching by
migrating the PDBs to a new CDB.

While pluggable
databases offer these exciting features, it can also pose configuration
management and compliance challenges if not managed properly. Enterprise
Manager features like inventory management, topology associations and
configuration search can mitigate the sprawl of PDBsand also lock them to predefined golden
standards using configuration comparison and compliance rules.

Learn More ...

Currently, customers resort to cumbersome
methods to create, execute, track and monitor change activities within their data
center. Some customers use traditional tools such as spreadsheets, project
planners and in-house custom built solutions. Customers often have weekly sync
up meetings across stake holders to collect status and updates. Some of the
change activities, for example the quarterly patch set update (PSU) patch
rollouts are not single tasks but processes with multiple tasks. Some of those
tasks are performed within Enterprise Manager Cloud Control (for example Patch)
and some are performed outside of Enterprise Manager Cloud Control. These tasks
often run for a longer period of time and involve multiple people or teams.

CAP provides the ability to plan,
execute, and track change activities in real time. It covers the typical
datacenter activities that are spread over a long period of time, across
multiple people and multiple targets (even target types).

Here are some examples of Change Activity
Process in a datacenter:

· Patching large environments (PSU/CPU
Patching cycles)

· Upgrading large number of database
environments

· Rolling out Compliance Rules

· Database Consolidation to Exadata
environments

Managers can create change activity plans for various projects, allocate
resources, targets, and groups affected. Upon activation of the plan, tasks are
created and automatically assigned to individual administrators based on target
ownership. Administrators (DBAs) can identify their tasks and understand the
context, schedules, and priorities. They can complete tasks using Enterprise
Manager Cloud Control automation features such as patch plans (or in some cases
outside Enterprise Manager). Upon completion, compliance is evaluated for
validations and updates the status of the tasks and the plans.Learn More about CAP ...

Improved Configuration & Compliance Management of a large number of systems

Improved Configuration Comparison:

Get to the configuration comparison results faster for simple ad-hoc
comparisons. When performing a 1 to 1 comparison, Enterprise Manager will
perform the comparison immediately and take the user directly to the results
without having to wait for a job to be submitted and executed.

Flattened system comparisons reduce comparison setup time and reduce
complexity. In addition to the previously existing topological comparison,
users now have an option to compare using a “flattened” methodology. Flattening
means to remove duplicate target instances within the systems and remove the
hierarchy of member targets. The result are much easier to spot differences
particularly for specific use cases like comparing patch levels between complex
systems like RAC and Fusion Apps.

Enterprise manager 12c introduces a new framework level
capability to be able to script and stitch together multiple tasks using
EMCLI. This powerful capability can be leveraged for lifecycle
operations, especially when executing a task over a large number of
targets. Specific usages of this include, retrieving a qualified list of
targets using Configuration Search and then using the resultset for
automation. Another example would be executing a patching operation and
then re-executing on targets where it may have failed. This is
complemented by other enhancements, such as a better usability for
designing reusable configuration searches.

IN EM 12c Rel 3, a simplified UI makes building adhoc searches even easier. Searching for
missing patches is a common use of configuration search. This required the use
of the advanced options which are now clearly defined and easy to use.

Perform “Configuration Search” using the EMCLI. Users can find and execute Configuration
Searches from the EMCLI which can be extremely useful for building
sophisticated automation scripts.

For an example, Run the Search named “Oracle Databases on Exadata” which finds all Database targets running on
top of Exadata. Further filter the results by refining by options like name,
host, etc..

Use this in powerful mass automation operations using the new emcli script
option.For example, to solve the use case of –Finding all DBs running on
Exadataand housing E-Biz and Patch them.
Create a Python script with emcli functions and invoke it in the new EMCLI script
option shell.

Invoke the script in the new EMCLI with script option directly:

$/emcli @myPSU_Patch.pyRicher compliance content:

9 Oracle provided Real Time Monitoring Standards containing over 900
Compliance Rules across 500 Facets. These new Real time Compliance Standards covers
both Exadata Compute nodes and Linux servers. The result is increased Oracle
software coverage and faster time to compliance monitoring on Exadata.

Enhancements to Patch Management:

Overhauled "OFFLINE" Patching experience:Simplified Patch uploads UI to improve
the offline experience of patching. There is now a single step process to get
the patches into software library.

Customers often maintain local repositories of patches, sometimes called
software depots, where they host the patches downloaded from My Oracle Support.
In the past, you had to move these patches to your desktop then upload them to
the Enterprise Manager's Software library through the Enterprise Manager Cloud
Control user interface.

You can now use the following EMCLI command to upload multiple patches directly
from a remote location within the data center:

$emcli upload_patches -location
-from_host

The
upload process filters all of the new patches, automatically selects the
relevant metadata files from the location, and uploads the patches to software
library.

Other
Improvements:

Patch rollback for single instance databases, new option in the Patch Plan to
rollback the patches added to the patch plans. Upon execution, the procedure
would rollback the patch and the SQL applied to the single instance Databases.

Improved
and faster configuration collection of Oracle Home targets can enable more
reliable automation at higher level functions like Provisioning, Patching or
Database as a Service.

Just to recap,
here is a list of database lifecycle management features:

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Disclaimer

Opinions expressed in this blog are entirely the opinions of the writers of this blog, and do not reflect the position of Oracle corporation. No responsiblity will be taken for any resulting effects if any of the instructions or notes in the blog are followed. It is at the reader's own risk and liability.

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